Jerusalem — Gaza health ministry said Friday the number of Palestinians killed in relentless bombardment by Israeli forces as well as in the Israeli ground assault reached 9,227, two-thirds of them women and children.
War raged in Gaza on Friday for a 28th day since the attacks of October 7 when Hamas militants stormed the border, killing 1,400 people and kidnapping more than 240, Israeli officials say.
Here are the key developments from the past 24 hours
Convoy of ambulances hit: Hamas
The Hamas government in Gaza said Friday an Israeli strike hit a convoy of ambulances, which the health ministry said killed multiple people near the territory’s largest hospital.
A government statement said Israeli forces targeted “a convoy of ambulances which was transporting the wounded” from Gaza City towards Rafah in the south.
Also Read Exclusive reports on Gaza-related developments
The health ministry announced “several citizens were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike at the entrance to Al-Shifa hospital” in Gaza City.
An AFP journalist at the scene saw multiple bodies beside a damaged ambulance.
The Israeli military said it was “unable to address or confirm specific queries at this time”, when contacted by AFP about the incident.
Al-Shifa hospital is facing severe overcrowding, with a bed occupancy rate of 164 percent according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Some 16 hospitals across Gaza are no longer functioning because of damage from strikes and a lack of fuel, the health ministry said.
Blinken in Israel
On a tour of the region, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about having “humanitarian pauses” in the war in Gaza
“We believe that each of these efforts would be facilitated by humanitarian pauses, by arrangements on the ground that increase security for civilians and permit the more effective and sustained delivery of humanitarian assistance,” Blinken told reporters.
He said the creation of a Palestinian state “is the only way to ensure lasting security for a Jewish and democratic Israel”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, warned that there could be no “temporary truce” in Gaza unless Hamas releases the estimated 241 Israeli and foreign hostages it took during its October 7 attacks.
Both Israel and the United States have previously ruled out a blanket ceasefire, which they say would allow Hamas to regroup and resupply, but US President Joe Biden has backed “temporary, localized” pauses.
‘America is entirely responsible’
The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, said the United States is “entirely responsible” for the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza as he broke with weeks of silence on the conflict amid concerns of a broader regional conflagration.
“America is entirely responsible for the ongoing war in Gaza and on its people, and Israel is simply a tool of execution,” Nasrallah said.
Nasrallah warned Israel against attacking Lebanon, saying the possibility of “total war is realistic”.
Nasrallah said his group was not afraid of US warships and “all options” were open for an expansion of the Israel-Hamas conflict into Lebanon.
In his first speech since war broke out last month between Hamas and Israel, the head of the powerful Lebanese Shiite movement said the United States was responsible for the Gaza war and that Washington could prevent a regional conflagration by halting attacks on the Palestinian territory.
“Whoever wants to prevent a regional war — and this is addressed to the Americans — must quickly stop the aggression on Gaza,” he said.
The United States “impedes a ceasefire and the end of the aggression”, he added.
Troops encircle Gaza City
Fresh Israeli strikes hit northern Gaza on Friday, with the health ministry reporting at least 15 deaths in Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood and seven in the Jabalia refugee camp.
Israeli forces have urged Gazans to head south from Gaza City towards the southern end of the territory to escape the worst of the fighting, but the Hamas-run health ministry said that 14 fleeing Palestinians, including women and children, had been killed making this journey.
Witnesses said the strike hit Gaza’s coastal road, which the Israeli military has previously told civilians to take to travel south.
Late on Thursday, the army said troops had encircled Gaza City, drawing a warning from Hamas’s armed wing that they would go home “in black bags”.
On Friday morning, the militants said they were engaged in close combat with troops northwest of Beit Lahia and had fired missiles at Israeli military vehicles.
Returning Palestinian workers to Gaza
Israel began sending thousands of Palestinian workers back to Gaza who had been stranded inside Israel since war erupted with Hamas, a Gaza border official said.
“Thousands of workers who were blocked in Israel since October 7 have been brought back,” the head of Gaza’s crossings authority, Hisham Adwan, told AFP.
The Israeli security cabinet had announced on Thursday that it was “severing all contact with Gaza”. “There will be no more Palestinian workers from Gaza,” it said.
‘Approaching revenge’
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar expressed concern that Israel’s response had gone beyond tackling Hamas in self-defense and now “resembles something more approaching revenge”.
While affirming what he said was Israel’s right to defend itself, he added “but what I am seeing unfolding at the moment isn’t just self-defense, it resembles something more approaching revenge and that’s not where we should be”.
France demanded that Israel explain why it had bombed a French institute in Gaza. “We have asked the Israeli authorities to communicate to us without delay… the tangible elements which motivated this decision,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
UN launches appeal for $1.2bn aid
The UN launched an emergency aid appeal seeking $1.2 billion to help some 2.7 million people in Gaza and the West Bank.
“The cost of meeting the needs of 2.7 million people — that is the entire population of Gaza and 500,000 people in the occupied West Bank — is estimated to be $1.2 billion,” the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
OCHA had originally sought $294 million in aid to support nearly 1.3 million people in an appeal on October 12.
“The situation has grown increasingly desperate since then,” it said.
OCHA said the new appeal “will outline the need for food, water, health care, shelter, hygiene and other urgent priorities following the massive bombardments in the Gaza Strip.